Abstract
Wheels and Carts of the Ancient Turks in a Linguistic Wiew
Some vocabulary pointing to geography, technology, culture etc. are usable in defining homelands of peoples, thus of language families and their sub-groups. Recent scholarship has tended to refer words concerning wheel and cart, since they are related to some Neolithic technological innovations visible through archaeological surveys, in searching for Indo-European homeland and in defining chronologies of early steps. Those studies are within Eurasian context at all. Turks and Turkic belong to the true Eurasian continent, and should not be exempted from such studies. This paper deals with the concerning Turkic vocabulary and its historical comparison with other Eurasian languages and families, and suggests that Turkic words for wheel and cart are as old as the words of other families (mainly Indo-European). Regarding possible loanings of those Turkic words to some other languages, Turkic homeland is set to the west of Central Asia.
Keywords
Homeland, Indo-Europeans, Turks, Neolithic Eurasia, wheel, cart.